Emmanuel de Martonne: biography of this French geographer.

Summary of the life of Emmanuel de Martonne, French geographer influential in this branch of science.

Emmanuel de Martonne has been a very important illustrious figure in France during the 20th century thanks to his contributions to geography and, also, to have helped to draw the new European map after World War I. He was a disciple of one of the great geographers of the 20th century.

He was a disciple of one of the great geographers of the time, Paul Vidal de la Blache, and during his lifetime he met other great geographers of the time, all of them interested in different branches of this discipline.

Below we will see the life, contributions and works of this researcher through a biography of Emmanuel de MartonneWe will also see some very interesting episodes of the history of France in which he was involved.

Short biography of Emmanuel de Martonne

Emmanuel de Martonne is one of the most important geographers of the 20th century, known not only in France but also in countries such as Romania where he contributed to its border profile. In his native country he is considered as one of the main founders of physical geography, knowing very well how to combine the knowledge coming from different natural and social sciences and thus creating a multidisciplinary geography. He studied both regular geography, i.e. the shapes of regions, and their ethnic composition.

Early years

Emmanuel de Martonne was born on April 1, 1873 in Indre, France.and was the son of the archivist A. Martonne. In his youth he studied at the Lycée de Laval, in Mayenne, being a classmate of the politician Carle Bahon and the writer and journalist Francis Delaisi. He had the opportunity to be a disciple of one of the most important geographers in the history of his country: Paul Vidal de la Blache. The relationship between Martonne and Blache ended up being very close, so much so that they became son-in-law and father-in-law.

De Martonne enrolled in the French École Normale Supérieure in 1895, the same year as another important French geographer, Albert Demangeon. Several years after his enrollment, he would obtain the same degrees as his mentor de la Blanche, thus earning the profession of geographer and historian. In 1902 he submitted a thesis on Wallachia (Romania) and in 1907 on the Transylvanian Alps, south of the Carpathians, thus earning doctorates in letters and science, respectively.s, respectively.

By that time he had already had some years of teaching experience, since he had just graduated from the École Normale in 1899 and obtained a teaching position at the University of Rennes. It would be in that institution where he founded the Institute of Geography, taking advantage of the great push that French geography was having. In 1905 he moved to the University of Lyon, being replaced at the University of Rennes by Antoine Vacher. Four years later he moved to the Sorbonne University.

In 1912, he participated with Demangeon, Antoine Vacher and Emmanuel de Margerie in a transcontinental excursion to the United States, organized by the American Geographical Society.organized by the American Geographical Society and led by Harvard geomorphologist William Morris Davis. Important American geographers, among them Isaiah Bowman and Douglas W. Johnson, also joined the trip.

World War I

With the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918) he landed one of the most important posts of his life. In January 1915 de Martonne took up a post assigned to him on the Geographical Commission.The commission, which also included some of the most important geographers of the time such as his father-in-law de la Blanche as well as Albert Demangeon, Lucien Gallois, Emmanuel de Margerie and Louis Raveneau.

De Martonne worked on the commission, giving professional advice to both French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and his foreign minister André Tardieu during the celebration of the Peace of Versailles congress. This congress was very important for the time and geographers played a special role in it, since it was time to redefine the borders of the Old Continent.

Emmanuel de Martonne was in charge of asking for the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France, a region in which the great city of Strasbourg is located and which had been under German domination since the end of the Franco-Prussian war at the end of the 19th century (1870-1871).

Last years

The figure of Emmanuel de Martonne is very well known in Romania, since he contributed to the establishment of the border boundaries of that country and other Balkan states in the early 20th century.. His studies on the people and cultures of the region served to shape what would become, in a matter of a few years, modern Romania, a country he fell in love with.

In fact, in addition to researching Romania in his youth, he visited and worked in the country. From 1921 he took up a position as professor of geography at the University of Cluj. He would stop working there for a time, focusing again on traveling around Europe and learning more about the ethnic and geographical distribution on the continent until his death on July 24, 1955 in Sceaux, very close to Paris. He is buried in the Montparnasse cemetery.

Contributions to geography

Emmanuel de Martonne's contributions to French academic geography have made him a very popular figure both in his native country and abroad. His professional career spanned more than 50 years, and his his novel views on what geography should be and how it should be researched had a major influence on French academics of the time, especially driven by his work on the geography of the time.He was a leading figure in the field of geography, especially as a result of his work as a teacher.

After teaching at the University of Rennes and the University of Lyon, he was appointed president of the Faculty of Geography in Paris, a position that helped him to disseminate a new way of looking at geography. There He taught the geographical method to several generations of students, emphasizing the importance of fieldwork and explaining the principles that should govern cartography..

Inspired by his mentor de la Blache, he wanted to create a new approach to geography, making it a multifaceted and multidisciplinary science. Because he was himself multifaceted and knowledgeable in various social and natural sciences, he was able to draw on the contributions of cartography, morphology, climatology, botany and zoology to make geography a great science. In fact, some call de Martonne the founder of general physical geography.

Works

Emmanuel de Martonne was a very multifaceted character, a doctor of sciences and letters who was the author of more than 150 books and articles, in addition to having contributed to the work of Paul Vidal de la Blache by writing the fourth volume of the book "Universal Geography". He is also known for developing his "Treatise on Physical Geography", one of the most influential works in world geography.. A continuación vemos un listado de varias obras de Emmanuel de Martonne, con su título original en francés.

• Recherches sur l'évolution morphologique des Alpes de Transylvanie (Karpates méridionales) (1906).
• Treatise on Physical Geography: Climate, Hydrography, Soil Relief (1909).
• Things seen in Bessarabia (1919).
• The geographical regions of France (1921).
• Abrégé de géographie physique (1922).
• The Alps, in General Geography (1926).
• The Alps, general geography (1931).
• Géographie universelle (1930).
• Aerial geography (1948).
• The aerial discovery of the world (1948).
• Universal Geography (1943).

Referencias bibliográficas:

• Hallair, G. (2007) Le géographe Emmanuel de Martonne et l'Europe centrale, Paris, Grafigéo, no. 33, 148 pp.
• Bowd, G. (2012) Un géographe français et la Roumanie: Emmanuel de Martonne (1873-1955), Paris, L'Harmattan, 222 p.
• Palsky, G. (2002). Emmanuel de Martonne and the Ethnographical Cartography of Central Europe (1917–1920). Imago Mundi. 54 (1): 111–119. doi:10.1080/03085690208592961. ISSN 1479-7801. OCLC 55939414.